One World, Many Peaces

A Tale of Two Neo-Colonialisms: China and the U.S. in Africa

There's a new "Scramble for Africa" taking place as you read this, one that rivals that which gripped and stripped the people and resources of the continent in the hands of Europeans in the late nineteenth century. But now, it's being waged in unprecedented twenty-first century ways that build upon those of the late twentieth, with two main players not a handful as before: China and the U.S.

Taking a closer look at what's been happening since the waves of supposed decolonization of the 1950s-1970s makes it clear that there are two very different kinds of neo-colonialism making inroads now, and they're not shaping up to be what you may expect from the two superpowers, the one old, the other even older.

This U.S. neo-colonialism actually being in the early 1800s, shortly after Americans through off the British yoke they tried to impose their own by supporting the nascent Liberia. The pattern has repeated itself innumerable times since: remain sovereign in name, while we supply you with capital, ideology and military support. During the Cold War, programs like the Peace Corps put a palatable veneer on what was then called neoliberalism in the next few decades, code name for the exportation of capitalism and democracy, whether the receiving country likes it or not.

The results have been mixed at best, and totally off target at worse, causing some of the worst humanitarian crises in human history while the upper classes of the oil-rich countries benefit and the lower classes continue to suffer, as they always have. Meanwhile purportedly global financial institutions, actually the U.S. and its allies in disguise, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) lend African countries sums and at rates they cannot possibly repay just as they "give" them foreign aid that gets sucked dry by men with guns supplied by the U.S. off before it reaches its most desperate targets.

As U.S. neo-colonialism began, China was doing its best not to be colonized by the West, only to be so by the Japanese in the early and mid twentieth century, often considered worse than Nazi occupation. By the time the Communist takeover was complete in the 1950s, China had such serious internal problems that looking outside its borders was practically impossible, let alone doing something. That situation changed when the toil and trouble of the billion or so Chinese made their country a manufacturing, and now middle class consumer, global powerhouse.

Ironically, for the past two decades, China has been anything but communist or neoliberal in its neo-colonialism, instead preferring to make huge direct investments in the infrastructure and resources of dozens of African countries without the pretenses and airs of democracy and military security (at least so far for the latter) Americans like to put on in doing exactly the same thing.

Together, American and Chinese neo-colonialism in Africa are likely to dominate Africa for the foreseeable future, or until such time as they come into conflict with one another. When they do, it will not be a battle of ideology that takes place, but a battle of the businesses and organizations that each country has and will put in place on the continent. That is, unless the pitiable African Union shapes itself up to be the continental leadership it can be and itself throw off all yokes, once and for all.

Or, better yet, keep the yokes that work as current events, make them their own and then disappear, and discard those that don't, at which point we will be in a future created by U.S. and Chinese neo-colonialism in Africa which cannot yet be predicted.

Hot Off the Press-- 2009: The Year in Review from One World, Many Peaces with Antony Adolf

 

 

What was 2009 all about — or was but you didn’t hear about it? How will 2010 and beyond take shape? 2009: The Year in Review is One World, Many Peaces’ answer. Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History, shares the stories he covered throughout the year as “Current Events Creating the Future” — Ours.

Includes three new essays by Antony Adolf published together for the first time:

•Buyers and Buy-Nots: The New Economics of Poverty and Affluence
•Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration Can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace
•A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?

One World, Many Peaces: The Blog and Podcast will start anew on January 5. Thank you for a great year and have a safe and happy New Year!

 

Jews Killing Non-Jews is Kosher, Asserts Prominent Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira

This is one among many realities that we wish would be too bad to be true. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the prominent right-wing spiritual leader in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has openly condoned Jews killing any non-Jews, including children and babies, who pose a threat to Israel. In his new book, the warmongering Rabbi asserts: "If a gentile endangers the existence of Israel, it is allowed to kill him. Also if he is completely not to blame for the situation that has been created." He might have well said that a genocide of non-Jews (no doubt referring primarily to Arabs) along Holocaust lines is kosher too.

 

But Rabbi Yitzhak Maniac does not stop there. Just breaking any of the Commandments put forth by Moses is grounds for holy murder. (I guess he just missed the whole "Thou Shalt Not Kill" part.) He goes on to write that "Children should not be exempt from this fate. There is a reasonable explanation for killing infants if it is clear that they will grow up to hurt us, and in this situation, the strike should be directed at them.” Seriously? This kind of moral delusions justifying infanticide aren't even worth a retort. What they are worth is a direct, unequivocal condemnation by the Israeli state and all international bodies, from the United Nations to Amnesty International to the Red Cross and beyond. And Rabbi Maniac should be put behind bars and never allowed to speak or write, ever, unless he recants. Doing so would be less an act of censorship than a service to humanity.

The scariest part of all is that Rabbi Maniac isn't the driver of this overtly racist, malevolent and violent religious beliefs, according to the Israel Herald. He is just the leading mouthpiece of the radical Jews who are settling in the West Bank, where he runs a school in Yitzhar, one of the territory’s most hardline settlements, near Nablus. The popular regional newspaper Maariv has reviewed the Rabbi's book, but it will not be sold in major bookstores yet, "only" online and in person. By replicating the purported (and falsified) logic of Islamic terrorism Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is knowingly creating a retaliatory cycle of violence beyond the "eye for an eye" doctrine of the Torah. If this current event is allowed to develop, there will be no future for non-Jews and Jews alike.

Racism Trumps Religion for Israel's Ethiopian Jewish Immigrants

Non-violent demonstrations in Israel by once warmly welcomed Jewish Ethiopian  immigrants were shut down by police while political leaders sought an 11th hour deal to allow black students into schools, reminding many of the anti-segregation struggles in the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s. Ethiopians were brought into the country in celebrated covert operations during the 1980s and 90s, but now find that racism trumps the shared religion that brought the to Israel in the first place. The root of the problem is made evident in a recent book's title, One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism.  

"We came here because we thought Israel was our country. We didn't expect this," said Demelash Belay, a 36-year-old English teacher who moved to Israel in 2006 in a CSM interview. "We heard in Ethiopia that Israel is a democratic country. We found discrimination. And because of it Ethiopians are suffering." Protest leader Uri Kabadeh wore a T-shirt reading "We want equality, we're all Jewish" as he led a crowd chanting  in both their native Amharric and adopted Hebrew. "Down with racism, down with discrimination." 100,000 Ethiopians now live in Israel , with more arriving each year. Non-violent demonstrations an police responses are nothing new.

Some say the difference between this situation and U.S. segregation is that the latter was state-supported and this one comes from institutions like schools and the native ethnic Jewish population. But wait a second. "Native ethnic Jewish population"? That's a term deserving of a bit of deconstruction: the Jews in Israel came and come from every nation in Europe and the Americas, as well as different parts of Asia. What is an ethnic Jew? Is not the identity of Jews based in religion not race, a dangerous conflation that often repeated events of the 20th century make clear? Not for Ethiopian immigrants there.

The Apartheid-like treatment of Palestinian based on Arab ethnicity and religious affiliations (mostly Muslim, also Christian),  the actual "native" population, is explicitly supported by the Israeli state. Is the feigned "acceptance" of Ethiopians meant as a palliative or a smokescreen? Israel's sole Ethiopian parliamentarian rushed to the state's defense, forgetting that what is happening to his constituents is but a pale reflection of ongoing, racist and religionist current events creating the future of Palestinians, the Middle East region and the world their grandchildren will inherit.

Powerful Pan-European Moment in Peace History Memorialized

Picnics are far from the first events that generally come to mind when we think of key moments or turning points in the Cold War; the Bay of Pigs, atomic weapons development, the space race, and the fall of the Berlin Wall are understandably much more common. However, European leaders and participants commemorated a peaceful-picnic-turned-exciting-escape that changed the course of world history yesterday, with lessons that can still inform how nonviolent transformations can occur in any culture today.

 

In 1989, Communist Hungary's political opposition party organized a picnic in Sopronpuszta on the Austrian border in an attempt to press for more civil rights and attract closer ties with their capitalist neighbors.  Among the 10,000 people who gathered to eat, drink and be merry-- while making a powerful, peaceful political point to the world-- were about 600 East Germans who got word of the picnic and decided to join.  "Hungarians gave wings to the East Germans' desire for freedom," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the commemorative event. 

 

The wider Cold War context was the new era of glasnost — or openness — under reformist Soviet leader Mikail Gorbachev. Yet, 80,000 Russian troops were stationed in Hungary at the time. There was a bit of impromptu planning involved in the escape, but it was the heat of the moment, or rather the peaceableness of the moment, that provided the impetus for several of these East Germans to be inspired by a Hungarian border guard who was politically passive, letting through the border gate.  After this small group got through, the floodgate burst open.

 

The East Germans who made it across were thereafter known as "Ossies." One of them, Dirk Mennenga, remembers worrying about the sole border guard: "A young Hungarian man kept pointing the way and before we knew it we were in Austria." Today, Lt. Col. Arpad Bella, the lifetime border guard, is considered a hero by the Ossies, former Easterners and Westerners alike. Unbeknownst to all of them, however, was that the opposition leaders had already decided to let them through.The last communist leader of Hungary, Miklos Nemeth, said at the memorial that "It was a planned process on behalf of the government, but it was a transition where everyone was also seeking to secure their own future."

 

The government provided a peaceful opportunity for protest which participants made the most of, and then some. Within a month, Hungary allowed all East Germans to cross into Austria. Within three months, the Berlin Wall fell. All violent protests today, from the anti-healthcare mobs in America to the Taliban jeopardizing Afghan elections, would do well to learn from this powerful pan-European moment in peace history to create a better future.

 

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Key Weapons in 21st Century Military are Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural Fluency for Obama

"In the 21st century," Obama pronounced with assurance facing the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "military strength will be measured not only by the weapons our troops carry, but by the languages they speak and the cultures they understand."

Soldiers of the armies of the future, it turns out, will include cream-of-the-crop linguists, literary critics and cultural studies wonks who will make gun toting and tank driving soldiers look like caveman throwing rocks and cowboys riding horses, or so the President would have us believe. Waging war would be tantamount to battlefield diplomacy, peace found in translation.

Ironically, the weaponization of language (or rather what I call linguistic agency between two or more languages in Multilingualism and Immigration in U.S. Public Policy) is also a form of demilitarization in the traditional sense. Of course, from a General's point of view, speaking to someone in their language cannot replace shooting them in the head if you cannot and they are obstructing the completion of your mission. But we can always hope that if they communicate in writing, such violent acts can simply be replaced with ellipses ("…") and their non-English equivalents. 

"If Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork," Obama went on to say, "I will veto it." Showing such cultural sensitivity to Jews and Muslim is surely leading by example.

The President's pronouncement is, globally speaking, a counter-cultural move in one sense and a breakthrough for multilingualism domestically and worldwide in another. As previously reported on One World, Many Peaces, Malaysia has imposed a highly problematic partial ban on the English language, and Turkey as well as a host of other countries continue to actively suppress local languages within their nation-states.

Let us not forget, too, that the U.S. Congress declared English the official language of the country for the first time in its history in 2006 in the face of growing presence and protests by Spanish-speakers. Could Obama be reversing the monolingual tide? Could critical theory inform the miltiary strategies of the future?

I have been arguing for a better understanding of multilingualism outside and especially inside the academic humanities for almost ten years now, the study of which led me directly to peace studies in that inter-lingual and cross-cultural communication are at the heart of each discipline. What Obama has done here, however, is bring the theoretical cross-pollinations my research and writings have tried to bring to light into the actual conditions and participants in wars on the ground, with the potential financial and human resources backing that only nation-state military ventures have summoned.

Multilingualism and cross-cultural fluency are current events as sine qua non of globalization, but what their militarization means in creating the future is more difficult to make out.   

 

European Muslims Launch Identity-Based Peace Initiative

Becoming an agent of peace is starting to sound as glamorous to young European Muslims as being a secret service agent was to young Americans until recently, when the profession of sniper took first place (really). An innovative conference bringing together scholars and organizers of Islamic communities across Europe is now taking place in Caux, Switzerland, lead by an inter-faith peace group with a storied and successful past, making clear their concerns for peace and threats to it in the present and future.

In his high-profile book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, Christopher Caldwell estimates that between 20% and 32% of the populations of most European countries will be foreign-born by the middle of the century, the majority of them Muslim. But whereas he does so to contend that by clinging to their identity Muslims will destroy Europe as we know it, the participants of the Caux conference are committed to exploring and enacting the idea that Europeans since the 9th Century CE have always defined themselves in relation to Islam, and that they not only must, but can also benefit from recreating itself with a stronger Islamic component.

Initiatives for Change, organizing this conference, brokered meetings in the late 1940s between opposing factions in World War Two. Their task today seems no less daunting, and picking between their and Caldwell's vision is a no brainer for anyone who cares about humanity in the least. Acknowledging the one-sidedness of bringing only Muslims of different denominations to the conference, its organizer Peter Riddell believes both sides need to seriously reconsider their relations. "We're faced with a need to redefine what it means to be European. In many ways you could say that European culture has defined itself in opposition to Islam," he said in a BBC interview.

"So now the challenge is, whether we're going to embrace a European culture which includes a substantial component of Muslims, or whether we're going to reject that," as Caldwell seems to.  The keynote speaker, Ajmal Masroor, urged participants to "Go back and revive and reclaim the culture of peace which has been the foundation of our faith," words that preachers and practitioners of any and all religious traditions have the duty and honor to repeat until doing so as a current event creates the peaceful future all faiths feed into as a perpetual present.

Chinese Riots Rooted in Conflation of Religion, Race and Class

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Rather than Chinese government crackdown deaths, those in Urumqi today were mostly by rioters against their targets, with their respective and deep-seated identities as the ultimate causes.  The roots of the Chinese riots defy the easy categorizations upon which most media outlets depend in crafting 'breaking news' stories and weaving them into a series meant to attract your mouse clicks. Here is the gist and background of the situation as it is still unfolding.

 

Muslim Chinese (present in the northwest Xinjiang region since the times of Genghis Khan, c. 1200) have resented the central governments suppression of their religious practices, which in their recent communist manifestations were supposed to be alleviated by economic prosperity. Instead, the prosperity went mostly to ethnic Han Chinese of the region, creating a two-tiered society with Muslims at bottom and Han on top. A secessionist movement grew and violence erupted in the early 1990s, but all seemed to be quiet on the northwestern front until today.

 

While the roots of the conflict are thus clear, what remains unclear is the trigger for today's street violence in which about two-hundred were killed and many times more wounded from knives, home-made bombs and other weapons of minor destruction.  Confusing the roots of the conflict in the conflation of religion, race and class with its immediate causes (yet unknown), journalists have scrambled, speculated and spectacularized instead of getting their facts straight and relevant quotes, and leaving the commentary to the commentators. It was even suggested that the riots were meant to further tarnish China's reputation abroad. 

 

What Chiang Kai Chek did with nationalism first (1920s), and Mao Zedong did with communism second (1940s), was to use ideologically-defined traits to minimize or eliminate traits stemming from other traditions. These, of course, included religion, race and class, sowing the seeds of unrest. Expatriate Uyghur Groups like the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Munich and the US-based Uighur American Association played up the government response to the riots but said little about their compatriots use of violence, the instigation of which remains unclear to outsiders but not the root causes. This is when the value of the non-violence espoused by expatriate leader the Dalai Lama from nearby Tibet becomes obvious.

 

Most major news providers were desperate for a scoop, resulting in piecemeal coverage even compared to the Iranian protests. Reuters was most concerned with how the riots would affect Chinese markets, consumers and producers; AP and Huffington Post dug for civil liberties issues, and have yet to find one; CNN and Fox each sought pre-internet political intrigue in their own way, sticking close to government-fed lines (US and China) and pundit performances; the BBC characteristically did a little of all the above. They were all looking for the wrong thing in the right place. No Al-Qaeda here. What's news is what's not news: Twitter is shut down.

 

It may be that this uprising marks the rise of a time when not governments acting indirectly, but concerned and somehow connected people acting directly from one country can and do influence the events in and directions taken by another country without leaving their metaphoric armchairs.  That is, the expatriates and affiliates no longer need the instrument of government to carry out their plans abroad, although they may need to ensure that their plans are not prevented from being carried out from where they are or where they air aiming. 

 

So while Obama and Medvedev are busy making nice and getting rid of not enough nuclear weapons in the process, the Summer of 2009 is shaping up to be one of international protests perhaps comparable in scale to those of 1848, the year social uprisings were brutally crushed by newly empowered national governments around the globe.  Let's hope the current events of today work out better for everyone than those then, creating a future in which such upheavals have found more peaceful vehicles.

Victory is Not Peace in Separatist Sri Lanka or Elsewhere

Separatism of one kind or another has, is and will continue to be a threat to peace locally and globally for as long as those who seek separation or to thwart it condone and are enabled to use force in achieving their antithetical ends.  As the killing of the longtime leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka goes to show, a military victory over or of separatists never in itself constitutes peace.

Today the Sri Lankan President, whose predecessors have been assassinated by the LTTE, announced that the organization's leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead, though the fact remains unconfirmed. He quickly went on to announce that the country is "liberated" and "united," first in the dominant language then in the minority Tamil language of the rebel region. Meanwhile, the displacements caused by the national military's "victorious" move have caused a humanitarian catastrophe that precludes any kind of peace in the originary and destination regions.

Without going into its finer points, this is a classic case of the saying "one group's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." To be clear, this is not to say that secessionism is inherently violent or invalid in any way; the examples of the successful Czech and Slovak states and the so far unsuccessful Canadian province of Quebec stand out but not alone. However, that there is no internationally accepted process for resolving such intra-national conflicts before they become or in being violent, as there are for inter-national conflicts, shows a serious shortsightedness by which millions suffer and die.

What can be said for certain, though, is that the goal of more and even complete autonomy within an existing political framework entails less friction than complete separation close to as a matter of course. It is all too easy to say that in this age of global integration separatism is an anachronism without taking one's head out of the clouds of theory and looking at conditions on the ground. On the contrary, it is highly possible that separatism is itself correlated with globalization because of the disparities due to mismanagement it can create.

Only after or in reaction to becoming part of something is separatism plausible, and with the world being evermore integrated there are only two ways to go: in, or in but out. Safe to say the only way to ensure peaceful resolutions of separatist situations is for internationally accepted standards to developed and implemented, say under the auspices of the UN if it is delivered from its impotence. But as the UN was created to protect peace between nations only (as opposed to within), this seems unlikely. And so separatist violence in Sri Lanka and elsewhere continues as a threatening situation for current peace prospects creating the future, for no good reason at all.

Bioglobalism, Bioterrorism and Swine Flu

Those who are as unconditionally for globalization as others are against it can at least agree on a three points: that it's happening, that it's impact is yet immeasurable, and that it's intensifying. Each faction also shares the tendency to focus on the effects of the obvious: worldwide flows of capital, cultures, commodities and people. And so, what is overlooked by nearly all is what's literally invisible about globalization-- until it's visibility becomes a threat to everyone, everywhere. 

Yet, the closest frame of reference to what may be called bioglobalism, the inevitable flow of microscopic and other living organisms that comes with globalization, may be bioterrorism more than globalization itself. The devastating consequences imported and invasive plants can have on local ecological systems parallels the consequences pathogens like swine flu can have for human communities. However, plant migration is usually done on misguided purpose, while pathogen migration happens despite our best efforts to stop it. Strangely enough strong analogies can be made between both plant and pathogen bioglobalism and bioterrorism.

Bioterrorism, scary as it is, isn't as scary as malignant bioglobalism: terrorist acts are assumed to be limited to a specific location or group, even if with biological weapons they may not be contained; globalization is by definition everywhere all the time, and that means your community right now too. Above all, the fear factor difference between bioterrorism and bioglobalism is that the former usually happens for specific reasons, and the latter for no apparent reason at all. The 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic killed 40 million people worldwide. That's close to the death tolls of World Was One and Two combined, in one year, with no weapons, no enemies and no peace treaties. The last pandemic in 1968, the 'Hong Kong Flu', killed one million people worldwide.

We generally remain in the 9/11 mindset about possible terrorist attacks: they will be spectacular, their messages unsubtle, and quick to be claimed by haters of everything "we" are. Nobody to my knowledge has suggested that the outbreak of swine flew in Mexico was an act of bioterrorism aimed at coinciding with Obama's recent trip there, infecting him and so Washington and the US in the process. I hope the museum worker who died of swine flu a day after the President's visited the place is investigated. And although the fact that Obama was there to speak against drug trafficking makes a plausible motive for the powerful Mexican and  international drug cartels to take action, no facts I know of support this conspiracy theory. But in any case: killing with a bullet is murder, killing with a cough can be genocide.

Instead, what has emerged is a narrative in which individuals unaware of their own vulnerability and of all demographics around the world are at risk of a new strain of the flu virus that combines animal with human genes. Bioglobalism, it seems, is a radical democratization of bioterrorism, whether or not the latter causes the former. SARS, bird flu and other recent pandemic scares are somehow different from the swine flu, if only in how the media is reporting it and how the number of cases in the US remains unannounced. Even if bioterrorism is eliminated as a current event creating the future, bioglobalism may not or cannot be.